Keep on Living
by JustDrinkTea
Summary: You are lost, afraid, but most of all, you are alone. Your grandmother was always there to take care of you. But now with her gone, every day becomes a challenge. You can survive, but how will you live?


Your name is Jake English and you are alone.

You've known this for a while now, it's nothing new to you. It's been that way for several years now. Of course, that doesn't change the fact that your age is barely into the double digits and you're struggling to survive on your own.

It's pretty difficult, but at least your grandma taught you to shoot before she passed. You suppose that makes surviving an easier task. It might be even easier if you didn't refuse to touch a rifle. Not that you had some sort of particular phobia or dislike towards that specific species of weaponry, but rather you'd prefer to stay away from your grandmother's weapon of choice. Your pre-teen emotions are far to easily broken at this point.

You've cried. A lot. Saying so otherwise would be a blatant lie. At first you didn't cry at all; it was almost as though you were simply waiting to wake up from some horrible nightmare. But after a week or so when that didn't happen, you broke down. That was a rough couple of days; you hardly ate, never slept. Most of the time you just stumbled along through the jungle.

It wasn't until you finally found your room globe that you started to recover.

Now, years later, you're better. Still not fully over the incident, but at least you don't wake up with wet eyes anymore.

Even still, it was a few years after your grandmother's death that you finally decided to continue on your life as it'd been before- exploring and such. A little bit at first, venturing out every couple of days to try and find some fruit or mushrooms.

Surviving.

A few weeks later, you rediscovered your voice. It'd seemed like ages since you'd had a conversation with anyone. But now you had no one to converse with, save for yourself. It wasn't long until you'd made a habit of talking with yourself. Reflections in pools, or just a voice in the air, regardless of the manner, the illusion of talking and laughing with someone was a welcome escape.

Of course you'd more than once crossed paths with the native monsters during this time, but you had always managed to scamper out of their line of vision before they had spotted you. After a while, you made it a habit to always carry two pistols around with you when you went out.

You were successful for about a year- making your way through life foreging and darting around the jungle, only to return to your bed and blankets. Still you were surviving.

But one day, you had made the mistake of staying out until dusk.

It's night when most the monsters come out and hunt. You were well aware of this; your grandma had warned you plenty of times not to go out without her unless absolutely necessary. But she was gone and you were running low on food. You had figured you would be able to get what you needed before the sun started to go down.

You were wrong.

On your way back, a monster spotted you through the trees. One of the big ones with crab claws; you knew it as soon as you heard the horrible, ear-shattering ___SKREE!_ ring out from behind you. In a panic, you'd dropped what little food you'd been carrying with you and fumbled around until you found one of your guns. Clumsily, you turned to face the oncoming monster and fired a shot, hitting it in one of its arms.

Once more you pulled the trigger, this time shooting it through its stomach.

In the few moments it took the animal to figure out it'd been injured, you ran and you ran fast. More than once you almost tripped over a vine, but somehow you managed to regain your footing and continue running. You continued on until you couldn't go any further and when you finally stopped, you had no idea where you were.

Hyperventilating and shaking, you dropped your pistol, fingers uncurling from the grip with some difficulty. Lost and afraid, you leaned back against a tree and slid down against the trunk until you were sitting. You felt hot tears running down your face. You attempted to wipe them away, but they gathered in your eyes faster than you could push them away. After a while, you gave up. One of your hands grabbed onto a low-hanging vine and gripped it tight. You pulled it to your chest, trying to release your stressed emotions into the plant.

Never before had you wished for human presence so hard. But there you were, still alone as ever, nothing more than a child.

Another two years passed. You were all but dead on the inside.

Then something happened. Some sort of miracle.

**TT: Hey  
TT: Name's Dirk.**

And finally, you found yourself able to not only continue surviving, but to keep on living.


End file.
